


The Tea on Coffee

by zynnser



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Crack, Dialogue Heavy, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 00:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21436960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zynnser/pseuds/zynnser
Summary: Hide, Kimi, and Yoriko go out for coffee and commiserate about the difficulties that come with dating ghouls. That's it, that's the fic.
Relationships: Kaneki Ken | Sasaki Haise/Nagachika Hideyoshi, Kirishima Touka/Kosaka Yoriko, Nishino Kimi/Nishio Nishiki
Comments: 10
Kudos: 169





	The Tea on Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> I never thought this would happen to me, but I was going through my old drafts and found this fic entirely complete among a pile of cobwebs from four years ago. So I polished it up a little, removed a few typos, and decided to post it. What universe does this take place in? A happy one. Why is it so fluffy and unlike canon? Because I said so. Was this beta'd? Absolutely not. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

“He just doesn’t get it,” Kimi said, setting down her coffee cup to start off this week’s round of mutual commiseration. “It’s like he really has no idea that going to the same corner cafe that only serves three types of sandwiches might get old after eating there every day for a week.”

Yoriko abandoned her hold on her own drink to lay her hand over Kimi’s in sympathy. “I’m fairly sure that’s just Nishio-san,” she said, looking to Hide for support.

Hide nodded in agreement. “When I worked with Nishio-sempai, he never drank anything but Blondie. Maybe it’s just that he enjoys having the same thing everyday?”

“No, he’s got a bunch of different beans at home, and he orders a different roast every time we go out, so it’s not that he doesn’t appreciate that variety is the spice of life; he just doesn’t seem to think to apply it to human food as well.”

Yoriko looked a little lost, which was fair since as far as Hide knew Touka always went over to her house to eat, so he stepped in to fill the gap. “You should just tell him. Touka-chan never has to take Yoriko-chan out to eat since she’s an aspiring chef. And Kaneki already knows where all my favorite restaurants are from when we used to eat there together, so we don’t really have any tips for you on this one.”

“Ugh.” Kimi sighed and let her head fall back to stare at the ceiling. “Do you think you could have Touka-chan and Kaneki-kun explain it to him?”

Hide exchanged a glance with Yoriko, silently asking her if Touka would have any luck before answering. “I’m pretty sure he only listens to you, Kimi-san.”

“If only,” she snorted, sitting up in her seat properly. “Now that he’s not the only one dating a human, he gets these _ideas_.” Hide shuddered at the thought_. _He’d seen some of Kaneki’s ideas and they were horrifying enough. “He thinks that because he knows how to shop for coffee beans and produce for the cafe that suddenly he’s an expert on human food.”

“That sounds like the time Touka-chan tried to go shopping for ingredients with me,” Yoriko put in, taking a sip of her coffee. “She had no idea how to tell if the vegetables were good or not, and she had absolutely no concept of portion size.”

“I think that might be because you always make enough to last for a week, Yoriko-chan,” Hide pointed out.

“No,” Kimi disagreed. “Nishiki has no idea what portions are either. He seems to think that because he can down an entire person in one sitting that we should be able to eat a comparable amount because we’re about the same size.”

“They all work in a cafe though,” Hide said incredulously, fingers tightening around his cappuccino. “They really haven’t noticed the meal portions there?”

Both women looked at him as though he were demanding the impossible. “Touka-chan says that not very many people order food,” Yoriko informed him. “They cater to a different clientele.”

“They get human customers,” Hide countered. “Kaneki used to go there all the time.”

The _and look what happened to him _hung unspoken in the air between them.

“So maybe not my best example,” Hide admitted, hiding is embarrassment with a mouthful of his drink.

“No, probably not,” Kimi agreed, sipping daintily from her cup as if to mock Hide’s manners. “And the only hot food they have is soup, so it’s not like working there teaches them anything about cooking.”

Hide blanched, setting down his cup a little harder than necessary as he saw where this was going. “Please tell me he hasn’t tried to cook for you,” he said. “Kaneki’s tried to cook for me and he could at least make edible food before his surgery. Now it’s like his entire sense of smell has gone haywire; he can tell me what perfume a woman half a block away is wearing but he can’t tell when he’s over salted a burger.”

Kimi shook her head in sympathy. “How do you eat it?”

“With lots of water on standby,” Hide said. “It’s also helps if you down a hot cup of coffee or tea beforehand. It scalds your tongue enough that it’s hard to taste anything else.”

“I haven’t done that before,” Kimi confessed. “I’ll have to try it next time.”

Noticing that Yoriko had been unusually silent, Hide turned to ask her what she thought but stopped when he saw the horrified expression on her face.

“Yoriko-chan,” Kimi said for him. “Are you okay.”

“Do you think,” Yoriko started, her eyes wide as they darted between Hide and Kimi, her hands clenching and unclenching nervously around her cup. “Do you think Touka did that with my food?” Hide stared at her blankly, waiting for further explanation. “I’m training to be a chef, so when we were in high school I used to make things for her when she wasn’t feeling well. You don’t thing she actually ate them, do you?”

Hide looked to Kimi and gave her a meaningful eyebrow raise; this one was hers to answer. He’d had to watch Kaneki go out to Big Girl, order something, and then _actually eat it_ too many times to give Yoriko the answer she wanted. Because if Touka cared about Yoriko in the same way Kaneki cared about Hide, she definitely ate every bite of food Yoriko had made her over the years, regardless of what it did to her health.

“I think she probably ate what she needed to to pass muster and gave the rest to her human acquaintances,” Kimi said and Hide nodded in silent agreement. God bless Nishio and his stupidly practical patterns of behavior. And god bless Kimi and her tactfulness. Amen.

Yoriko didn’t look convinced though, frowning down at her coffee mug. “I hope so. What do you think, Hide?”

Damn, guess he had to answer then. “I think she probably tried everything since you made it for her,” he said, wishing he couldn’t see the way Yoriko winced at his words. “But Kaneki’s never been able to keep anything down, so I don’t know if she managed to or not. Surely she wouldn’t let your thoughtfulness make her sick?”

Hide hoped that didn’t sound as far fetched to Yoriko as it did to him, especially with everything he’d heard Kaneki say about Touka. Touka seemed exactly like the type of person who would force herself to eat poison just because it was a gift from someone she loved. Well Kaneki thought she was that type of person; Hide didn’t really know her well enough to make those kinds of assumptions himself.

The lines on Yoriko’s face lessened, and she sighed. Patting himself on the back for a job well done, Hide changed the subject.

“So what about the coffee? Kaneki’s coffee collection is pretty impressive and he hasn’t had nearly as much time to hoard as Nishio-sempai and Touka-chan.”

“Touka-chan usually takes coffee from the shop,” Yoriko says, latching on to the topic change.

“They can do that?” Hide said, surprised. “Kaneki never does that.”

“Maybe it’s because he’s such a goody two shoes,” Yoriko replied, hiding her laughter behind the rim of her cup. “Touka-chan says that if the manager put in all that time and effort to find the best coffee in Tokyo, why should she go looking anywhere else?”

“Nishiki says that too, although with less flattering words,” Kimi agreed, laughing along with Yoriko. “You should really tell that boy of yours to get with the program, Hide-kun.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s trying to replace food with coffee,” Hide grumbled, staring down into his cup. “I didn’t even know they grew coffee in Yemen.”

“Yemen was one of the first places to popularize coffee, Hide,” Yoriko said with a giggle. “I’m surprised you didn’t know."

Hide gave her a confused look, because the history of coffee was not a piece of knowledge he had ever thought he’d need to know. And unless he was missing something really important, it didn’t contain any of the secrets necessary to learning how to live with a ghoul.

“Nishiki talks about it a lot too,” Kimi agreed, earning her a bewildered stare from Hide. “He said its chemical makeup is important to understanding the way ghouls metabolize drugs. He won’t admit it, but I’m pretty sure he joined the pharmacology department to look for similarities between the way ghouls and humans ingest nutrients.”

Hide personally thought that Nishio studied pharmacology to have a better grasp on how to ‘accidentally’ kill people with drugs, but he decided now was not the time to point that out.

“Touka-chan thinks that the history and spread of coffee might have ties to the evolution of ghouls, so she talks about Yemen and Ethiopia a lot,” Yoriko put in and okay, maybe there was a lot more going on with coffee than Hide knew about. He stared balefully down at his half empty coffee mug, wondering why it had betrayed him.

“I think it’s great that Touka-chan got into Kamii University,” Kimi said, smiling at Yoriko. “She’s sure she wants to go into biology? Nishiki and I would be happy to mentor her if she changed her mind and decided to go with a medical field.”

Hide didn’t think Nishio should be inflicted on anyone as a mentor, but he’s had a lot of practice in keeping his thoughts to himself. Yoriko returned the smile. “No, she says she wants to learn about the origins of ghouls; that she can’t rightly call herself a separate species until she really understands the differences.”

Nodding as though that made perfect sense, Kimi extended an offer. “Well if she ever wants someone to bounce ideas off of, our door is always open.

“Thanks, Kimi-san,” Yoriko said, turning to Hide. “How is Kaneki-kun doing in class these days?”

Hide snorted. “Well he’s attending classes again, so that’s good. He’s still majoring in biblophilia though, so at least that hasn’t changed.”

“You shouldn’t tease him about it so much,” Kimi chided. “He’s just doing what he loves.”

And Hide couldn’t argue with that, and he didn’t really want to. Recently Kaneki had taken to bringing his books over to Hide’s apartment and reading on his couch while Hide went over his notes or played video games and the way his face scrunched up when he got absorbed in his book was absolutely adorable.

“I don’t do it often,” Hide said truthfully with a dopey grin on his face, thinking of how cute Kaneki looked when he got embarrassed. “Just often enough to keep him on his toes.”

“I’m sure Kaneki-kun is fine with it,” Yoriko said supportively. “He’s had a while to get used to your company, after all.”

“You say that like its a bad thing,” Hide said mildly, grinning at her to let her know he wasn’t offended. “But he puts up with me pretty well. It helps that we’re going through this together and it’s not something I’m just being brought into the know about. How do you guys deal with that?”

Yoriko and Kimi glanced at each other, holding a silent conversation as to who would go first. Kimi won, and turned back to face across the table.

“I think it has a lot to do with how they grew up,” she said. “Nishiki occasionally mentions his sister, and he always gets a really sad look on his face and then won’t talk for an hour or so afterwards.”

Hide nodded, grim faced. He knew the sorts of family histories ghouls tended to have, and they made Kaneki’s stay with his aunt seem like a fairy tale.

“Touka-chan too, I think,” Yoriko agreed. “She told me about what really happened with her father when she told me about being a ghoul. It seemed like he wanted them to be comfortable around humans and she took that to heart.”

“Huh,” Hide said, wondering what that said about Kaneki. He certainly didn’t have any reason to put faith in people the way he did with Hide. Then again, he’d known for a while that that’s just the way Kaneki was; willing to put himself on the line for the people he cared about regardless of what it did to him.

“She did finally show me her kagune though,” Yoriko continued as if Hide hadn’t spoken. “It was really amazing, the way it grew out of her back like a wing and sparkled in the light.”

Hide kept his mouth shut and lifted his cup to his lips, not wanting to get dragged into the discussion about kagunes. If Yoriko was bringing up Touka’s wing, they must have a very different use for it than Hide had for Kaneki’s, because that wasn’t something he ever wanted to discuss in the present company. Or with anyone. Ever.

“Touka-chan’s kagune was the first one I saw, and it is gorgeous,” Kimi agreed, oblivious to Hide’s discomfort with the topic. “Nishiki said she’s an ukaku type, and that they tend to look like wings. I wonder if she’ll grow a second one as she gets older?”

“Maybe,” Yoriko replied. “She says she can shoot spikes out of it, but she wouldn’t let me see. I think I can convince her to show me next time though.”

“They’re really interesting,” Kimi said. “They apparently dissolve fairly quickly once they’re fired though; they can’t maintain form on their own very well.”

“So they’d be perfectly untraceable?” Yoriko asked in amazement. “No wonder ghouls are so hard to track down.”

“They’re also really fast,” Kimi said with a giggle. “Nishiki won’t admit it, but Touka-chan has him beat on speed. Every time I ask about it he keeps saying he could win if they had a fair fight, but the way he twitches when thinks about it says otherwise.”

“Nishio-san has a different sort of kagune?” Yoriko sounded surprised.

“Nishiki called it a bikaku,” Kimi grinned. “Don’t tell him I said this, but it looks like he has a tail when he lets it out.”

“A tail!” Yoriko exclaimed, bumping her coffee cup as she leaned forward in excitement, spilling it onto the saucer.

Kimi laughed and handed her a napkin. “It has a fork in at the end, so he likes to keep it hidden. I talked him into it after our encounter with the Gourmet.”

“I wonder if that helped Touka-chan and Kaneki relax about any about telling us,” Hide mused, eyeing the dregs at the bottom of his coffee cup. “I mean, obviously a few things happened between then and now, but I feel like maybe it helped? Maybe that’s why Kaneki and Touka-chan suggested we get to know you better.”

“I’m not sure about the first part, but you’re definitely right about Touka-chan introducing us,” Yoriko agreed. “I almost thought she was trying to set me up on a blind date when she sat me down at that table.”

“To be fair, she sort of was,” Hide replied with a smirk. “You just didn’t know that Touka-chan was your date.”

“True!” Yoriko giggled. “But say, Hide. You haven’t told us what sort of kagune Kaneki-kun has.”

Dammit, he’d really hoped they wouldn’t ask. “He has a rinkaku, so different from Nishio-sempai and Touka-chan.” His pronouncement was met with blanks stares and Hide took a moment to mentally curse recalcitrance ghouls who only half explained things.

“It’s, um. It... comes out of his lower back?” Hide said, desperately trying to come up with an description of Kaneki’s kagune that didn’t involve the word _tentacles_. “Kind of like a spider. He gets four extra hands.” Whoops he’d meant to say legs there, but from the the look on Kimi’s face she understood what all his stuttering was for, if not his actual explanation.

“I see,” she said, swooping in to save him from the conversation. She picked up her cup as if to drink it and then setting it back down with a sigh when she realized it was empty. “I wonder if Nishiki ever thought to try something like that.”

Hide coughed violently at the pronouncement, wishing he had something to bleach that image out of his brain with. “I sincerely didn’t need to know that.”

“What do you mean?” Yoriko asked, apparently unaware of the turn the conversation had taken.

“Nothing,” Kimi and Hide said in tandem.

“Maybe it’s something you could bring up with the cooking issue,” Yoriko said helpfully. Hide hoped she never outgrew her innocence; if she and Kimi ever teamed up on him he’d be done for.

Kimi hummed thoughtfully, pushing her cup into the center of the table and reaching for her bag. “It would make a good starter for that conversation, maybe I’ll try it.”

“Let us know how it goes next week, Kimi-san,” Yoriko said, standing and adjusting her jacket. “Same place?”

“Why don’t we try the cafe over by the bookstore on seventh street?” Hide suggested, getting to his feet and following the women to the door. “Kaneki says they serve a range of beverages and food too.”

“Sounds good,” Kimi said, pushing the door open and holding it for them. “I’ll see you there same time next week.”

“Take care, Kimi-san!” Yoriko called after her as she walked down the street toward Nishio’s apartment.

“Kaneki-kun goes there to read, doesn’t he?” Yoriko asked Hide as they set out in the opposite direction.

“He treats it like a library,” Hide agreed. “I went there once to surprise him and ended up sitting at the table across from him eating by myself as if he weren’t even there.”

Yoriko giggled. “He really loves books doesn’t he.”

“He does,” Hide returned with a smile as they reached the road where Yoriko lived. “I’ll see you there next week.”

“Have a good week, Hide,” Yoriko said, waving as she made her way up to her apartment.

Hide waited for her to get in, then continued on down the road to where Kaneki was waiting for him, probably with a book in hand. Reading was one thing that life hadn’t been able to take away from Kaneki, and Hide planned to make sure it stayed that way even if he did complain about it at the humans’ luncheon every week.

Because after everything was said and done, what made Kaneki happy made Hide happy too.


End file.
